Followers

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

What Obama Did Not Find The Courage To Say

The much awaited visit of US President Barack Obama to Kenya is done and dusted. By nearly all accounts, it was a massive success, showcasing the country as an investment destination and providing Kenyans an opportunity to claim the Kenyan-American leader of the free world as one of their own. However, in the fading afterglow of the trip, we can now begin to evaluate the events of the weekend. Perhaps a good place to start is with his previous visit here.

A leaked confidential US diplomatic cable reporting on a meeting between then
opposition leader, Uhuru Kenyatta and the then freshman Senator for Illinois during the latter’s 2006 tour of Kenya, contains this interesting exchange:

“Senator Obama commented that when he returns to Kenya in
10, or five years, he hopes he will not hear the same comments about KANU and
its failure to reform. Kenyatta then
challenged the Senator to publicly identify him as dishonest if he failed to
remain on the reform track, stating that it is Kenya's true friends who will
tell them when they are naked.”

9 years later, Obama did return as President of
the United States and again met with Kenyatta, now President of
Kenya. Did Obama take up the challenge? Did he show himself to be one of
“Kenya's true friends who will tell them when they are naked”?

Well, the verdict would appear to be mixed at best.
Certainly, he spoke eloquently about the need to confront corruption but with
nowhere near the forcefulness of his 2006 speech,
when he had averred that “the message that many Kenyans seemed to be sending
was one of dissatisfaction with the pace of reform, and real frustration with
continued tolerance of corruption at high levels”.

This time round, while acknowledging that the government
needed to enforce anti-corruption laws and prosecute offenders, he chided
opposition politicians for demanding that he put pressure on the Uhuru
administration over, according to them, corruption, insecurity and repressive laws restricting the media
and civil society. "Everybody wants the United States to be involved when
they're not in power but when they are in power, they don't want USA to be
involved," Obama told representatives of Civil Society, adding that he had
made it clear to the opposition chiefs that there is a legitimate government in
Kenya, which the US would work with.

(Interestingly, according to another leaked US diplomatic cable, Kenyatta, whose administration has
spent much of its first two years in office vilifying the West for its supposed
impositions, had in 2006 made the same request, even going so far as to suggest that
the Americans could use donor-funded programs as an effective pressure point.)

In his speech
to the Kenyan people, very much a rehash of his 2006 effort but with important edits, he also declared that corruption was tolerated because it
had become a way of life, a habit and culture that needed to change. This
contrasts with his previous stance when he had painted corruption as a problem of
governance and praised those who “reject[ed] the insulting idea that corruption
is somehow a part of Kenyan culture”.

Earlier, during a joint press conference with Kenyatta, Obama had noted that the corruption culture can
change “over time” when “people of integrity at the highest levels” are willing
to punish, not just petty corruption but also hold the elite to account. ”Breaking
habits and saying no comes from the top,” he noted. However, while praising his
counterpart’s “announced commitment to rooting out corruption”, Obama did not
mention that the fight against sleaze was already coming off the rails just four months after being trumpeted. Nor that many in the
country were sceptical about the government’s commitment to prosecuting its
own. Talk, it seems, is now progress enough.

This is again a marked change from 2006 when Obama demanded
that wealth declarations by public officials be accessible to the public
(hasn’t happened), called for accountable, transparent government and an
anti-corruption commission with real authority.

By attributing corruption to the people and ignoring the meagre
anti-corruption achievements, Obama appeared determined to spare his hosts
shame, perhaps mindful of the reaction his 2006 speech had elicited from the Mwai
Kibaki administration which described
him as an unintelligent and immature opposition puppet.

The reluctance to directly criticize the Kenyatta government
was most obvious when he addressed the issues of terrorism and the illegal
wildlife trade. On the former, he praised the “extensive and effective
counter-terrorism cooperation” and offered “practical advice” on avoiding
stigmatization of communities and restrictions on legitimate civil society
organizations.

However, he chose not to highlight the fact that the Kenyan
government had done little to convince ordinary Kenyans that it was taking the security problem seriously or learning lessons from the many attacks
the country has suffered.

Similarly, even as he announced new restrictions on ivory in
the US in a bid to help stem the slaughter of the country’s elephants, he
failed to take to task the Kenyan government for protecting the poachers doing
the killing.

Throughout the visit, Obama seemed determined to paint a
picture of progress and amid continuing challenges, to re-cast Kenya as “a good
news story” with Kenyatta at the helm “taking important steps in the right
direction”. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
But disappointing for those who had hoped Obama’s tour would include a
candid examination of whether his hosts had stayed true to the reform agenda. In
the end, for all his flowery talk, Obama could not find the courage to tell
the emperor that he has no clothes.